SEABROOK — A metal plating company is celebrating a special accreditation that it hopes will expand its work in the region's growing aerospace technology business.

Aero Dynamics Inc. at 142 Batchelder Road said it has been awarded "merit status" for metal finishing, plating and anodizing by the National Aerospace and Defense Contracts Accreditation Program.

"Contractors require the chemical process to have NADCAP approval," said Tom Gilligan, the company's vice president of operations. "If you have this approval your parts are going to be treated in a standardized way."

The NADCAP audit is normally once a year and Aero Dynamics has received the accreditation annually since 1998. This year, the NADCAP auditors gave the company special recognition by granting a two-year accreditation that extends to July 31, 2016. Gilligan described the process as "especially rigourous."

"Achieving NADCAP accreditation is not easy. It is one of the ways in which the aerospace industry identifies those who excel at manufacturing quality product through superior special processes," said Joe Pinto, vice president and chief operating officer at the Performance Review Institute, which oversees the audits.

"Companies such as Aero Dynamics Inc. go above and beyond achieving NADCAP accreditation to obtain merit status. They should be justifiably proud of it. Merit status demonstrates the trust that the aerospace industry has in Aero Dynamics Inc., based on their past performance in NADCAP audits."

Aero Dynamics specializes in the plating of raw metals with chrome, nickel and aluminum. The plating process with aluminum is called anodizing, which is highly used in the aerospace industry.

A manufacturer will send parts to Aero Dynamics for plating. For example, according to Gilligan, it anodizes a jet engine fan for General Electric. A third-party manufacturer makes the fans and ships them to Aero Dynamics for plating; the fans are then sent by Aero Dynamics to GE for installation into the engines.

"You're taking a piece of stainless steel or aluminum and giving it additional lifespan," Gilligan said. "You're making it harder; you're making it more corrosive resistant."

The company originated in Salem in 1990 and, needing room to grow, moved to 15,000 square feet of space at 146 Batchelder Road in Seabrook. In about seven years, it outgrew that space and moved into about 35,000 square feet of space next door at 142 Batchelder Road.

"Seabrook presented us with some opportunities and we wanted to stay in New Hampshire," Gilligan said. "New Hampshire is business friendly and business welcoming."

The size of the work force of primarily engineers and plating technicians has grown from eight next door to 23 now.

The plating technicians have to know their chemistry, according to Gilligan. "Each different metal has a different preparation process," he said. "They have to understand what the chemistry is and what it's used for."

With the country actively engaged in two ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gilligan said the company was doing a lot of plating work for military equipment — such as night vision scopes — to withstand the hard climates of wind, sand, heat and cold.

Now the emphasis is on the aerospace industry with companies like GE, Raytheon and General Dynamics.